That sounds really rough. I definitely got a lot of my self-worth from being smart when I was a kid (I wasn't socially or athletically adept, so academics was all I had going for me, or such was how I viewed it at the time), and I would have taken such a test result very badly. There's three things that come to mind: 1) Average isn't a bad thing. It really, really isn't. ITU not wanting to be average, wanting to stand out (for the first 30 years of my life I wanted to be as far from average as possible, I didn't think badly of people who were average, but I based my self-worth on *not* being average, on being special, and I simultaneously rejected any hint I wasn't special while also worrying, "What if it were true?") So ITU wanting those concrete test results to "prove" belonging, and the devastation of the test results proving that you "don't belong". But the thing is, smartness is *not* a good foundation for belonging or friendship or self-worth. For one, *most* people are average, and any ethic that excludes most people from belonging or friendship or the ability to live a life worth living - that's a *bad* ethic. I overtly rejected any hint that people who were average were in any way "unworthy" - but my fears of being average myself showed that some part of me didn't actually believe that. It's been in my 30s that I've dove into those worries and fears and dug out the false beliefs underlying them. 2) Another reason smartness isn't a good foundation is that there's *always* someone smarter. Always. If not right now, then there will be in the future. You can *never* count on always being "the smart one" in the group, or even "one of the smart ones". There's always people who are far ahead of you, doing things you couldn't dream of doing. So you need a way to appreciate the good you can do, while also appreciating the good that others can do. The good things others have don't diminish the good that you have. Other people having five talents don't make your two talents worthless or "less than". Easy to say, I know, but hard to really *feel* and live out. I've struggled with envy at times in reading about some of the very talented adults and kids on this board - I'm smart, but I'm not that smart, and my kids are smart but not that smart, too. I've had to work through and let go of false beliefs about being "the smart one". Rather, I need to use the gifts I have well, and rejoice with others when they use their gifts well - let go of this sense that my gifts only matter if they are "good enough", "special enough". 3) A test is just a test - an incomplete snapshot of one moment in time. She's still the same person she was before, with all the skills and talents she had. Nothing changed except her perception of them. And tests not only aren't end-all, be-all of life - they aren't even the end-all, be-all of *intelligence*. It's not just that you can't reduce people to a set of numbers - though you most certainly can't - but also that you can't reduce intelligence to a set of numbers either. I placed quite a bit of confidence in tests to "prove" my intelligence - ITU wanting "scientific", objective verification to place one's confidence in. But not only is one's intelligence a poor foundation for one's self-worth, but tests to prove one's intelligence are likewise a poor foundation for one's self-worth. It's not just that tests can't prove self-worth, but tests can't even prove intelligence. They provide a hopefully-helpful snapshot of some of the measurable bits and bobs we think are involved in intelligence. They don't measure everything, and sometimes they aren't as accurate at measuring the bits and bobs as they try to be, and the bits and bobs might not be as central as they think - just because it's measurable doesn't mean it's worth measuring. It does suck to be intelligent in ways that aren't measured well on tests - validation is nice and tests have such an outsized rep (more than they deserve imo) - but succeeding on those tests doesn't mean nearly as much as people sometimes think. The "validation" tests give is an extremely poor foundation for self-worth (btdt), and isn't nearly as much of a foundation for confidence in one's intelligence as people think (btdt, too). I hope your dd can help her friend.

Me three! But thinking about it, I can see how a misunderstanding could arise. If your default is to only offer friendly behavior to people who are your actual friends - so no chit-chatting with random strangers and such - then your gut reaction when people are friendly to you is that they consider you their actual friends. But most people aren't genuine friends with every single person they interact with. So if you interpret friendly behavior as indicating genuine friendship, and you note that southern people (for example) are friendly to people they aren't actual friends with, then it makes sense to feel it as fake. But as someone who grew up in the south (and has had to train myself *into* chit-chatting), I don't think that's how most people mean it - it's that friendly is how you are kind to people. And ime it *is* a genuine kindness, a genuine interest in people and their wellbeing. Also, ITU the OP's assuming that a lack of offer to help is a unstated way of indicating a lack of desire to help. On the other side of the coin, I definitely grew up with the expectation that if I'm willing to offer help, I should proactively offer it explicitly, not wait to be asked. That's what it means to be helpful - to offer and not make people have to ask. (I'm not great in social situations, and it's hard for me to offer - I don't know what to say or to offer or how to go about doing it at the right time, and there's lots of situations in which I wanted to help, but didn't say anything because I didn't know how to do it or what to offer.) I don't generally assume the reverse, though - that people who *don't* offer are *un*willing, without other collaborating evidence. I will say, when it seems like they are dodging the obvious place to offer to help multiple times, it does rather seem like they don't want to help. But from reading here, it sounds like they might wonder why you are constantly dodging the obvious places to offer up your request ;).

One thing, wrt going from carpet to some kind of hard flooring, is that it's a lot harder on your feet. My mom regrets replacing the carpet in the living areas with laminate for that reason. (Otherwise it looks very nice.) We just bought a house that has stone tile in the living areas and bathrooms, and carpet in the bedrooms. (The other house we seriously considered had wood/laminate (idk which) throughout the entire house.) I really love the tile - it's pretty and the pattern hides the dirt tremendously well. But it is definitely harder on your feet. Our first week here everyone's feet hurt a lot - we thought we were all going to need house shoes. Now that we've unpacked more and aren't on our feet so much, it seems to be better, but sometimes I go sit down when I otherwise wanted to be standing, just so I'm not standing on tile. In the realtor pictures, there were two mats down in the kitchen (in front of the stove and in front of the sink), and ITU why. That said, we are having to replace the carpet because of three zillion stains and ground-in food bits the previous owners left, and it's a ridiculous amount to get good carpet. The tile guy at the store said tile was cheaper - minus labor, it was half that of the carpet, but idk if labor makes up the difference. But my family generally prefers carpet in the bedrooms - the kids like the softness and plushness. And tbh it's nice to have a respite from the hardness of the tile, even though I really do love it - it looks so great, and it's cool on the feet (nice in the south). And it cleans so well - we even spilled paint on it, and we were able to wipe it right up, no stain. And it at least feels fairly indestructible - unlike with laminate, it doesn't seem to scratch; with laminate, my parents had to put furniture pads on the bottom of all their furniture. It might crack if we dropped something heavy (although I worry more about whatever we dropped), but it at least seems less likely to crack than ceramic tile. I will say, with house-hunting, I definitely wanted wood/laminate/tile instead of carpet, for allergy reasons and general maintenance reasons - it was biggish factor in my opinion of the houses we looked at. But obviously I didn't let the carpet in the bedrooms here turn me off the house. And I always had in the back of my head how much harder non-carpet flooring would be.

I use them as all-purpose towels. I keep a few in each room - we use them to wipe hands, wipe tables, wipe floors, wipe spills; sometimes I use them as hot pads or as napkins when eating in the living room. We're always saying, "Pass me a diaper." They are wonderfully absorbent, plus it's nice to have "towels" that you can use indiscriminately (unlike good dish towels or bath towels), and they are conveniently sized (unlike the dog towel). Plus there's enough to have one everywhere I want one, and plenty of spares to switch out dirty ones for fresh ones without having to constantly do laundry. Honestly, they are my favorite towels ever :lol.

Seriously? I have over 30 gallons of random Lego pieces I bought for $50 at a rummage sale. (There's a lot of instruction books tossed on top, but I've never gone through the bins to see exactly what there was - the kids just build whatever. I have thought about attempting to organize them by part and color, though, but that would be a pretty massive undertaking.)

Our family loves Dude Perfect. They do trick shots, plus several other things, and they're funny and entertaining to watch, and family friendly: https://m.youtube.com/user/corycotton

0/3 I mean, they climbed, but they were cautious and safe about it - never did anything beyond their capacities (or beyond my capacity to watch ;)). I always thought they had a good mix of caution and adventure - I didn't have to worry about them hurting themselves, but they would try things and extend their limits. (I, otoh, had too much caution in me when it comes to physical climbing stuff - fear held me back from things I otherwise wished I would try.) I did let them climb whatever they wanted - back of couch, table (both coffee and dining), counters, stand on chairs to get stuff (and jump off any of them) - but they never exceeded their abilities or my nerves ;). They weren't runners, either (they were clingers instead); and they didn't really put strange things in their mouths - I babyproofed pretty thoroughly, but they didn't search out flaws - my initial babyproofing did the trick. But, otoh, none of them (except the oldest) will go outside alone and none of them will go into the basement alone :rolleyes:. My two youngest are extremely picky eaters (like me) - the "no strange objects in mouth" extends to food we parents certify safe ;). There's a lot of anxiety about new things. And just as some of you can't fathom toddlers who don't regularly perform death-defying stunts, I can't fathom toddlers (or preschoolers) who sleep alone. (I'm still a little shocked my 6yo mostly spends all night in his own bed without any fuss.)

I hadn't really heard any cussing (minus the occasional "hell" or "damn") until I started middle school. I learned all the main ones pretty quickly while waiting at the bus stop ;). I don't remember a *lot* of cussing while actually in school in middle school (sometimes kids would try it out to be edgy or daring), but in high school there was a ton of cussing heard between classes. I didn't cuss much till college, but I let quite a few words fly in anger - my kids heard far more far earlier than I did, but they are mostly good about not using them. I only cuss at home, though, not in public. In general, I don't hear a lot of cussing while out and about - the main exposure my kids have had to cussing is me :blush:. Cussing doesn't really offend me, as such - I'm too desensitized to the words - but I am trying to lessen my cussing, or at least reserve it for the situations that merit it. Partly because frequent cussing makes me lazy in my speech - instead of finding the precise word, I just cuss - and I've noticed that cussing over little things makes them feel like bigger things. And also because I've become rather uncomfortable with what the cuss words express. Calling upon God to damn someone or something to hell is quite a big thing, and I do believe I ought to reserve it for when it's actually called for, or else it's blasphemy. I used to be more comfortable with the f-word and s-word - vulgarity instead of blasphemy, cussing instead of cursing - but I'm increasingly uncomfortable with the f-word. Using sex to express anger at someone or something (often in a threatening-the-object-of-your-anger-with-penetration kind of way) - common uses of the f-word - that's basically threatening (metaphorical) sexual violence. And using the f-word to mean sex in general, or as a general intensifier, demeans sex. Either way, it's not what sex is meant for, and it's not how I want to (mis)treat sex. So I'm really trying, although it's slow going. That leaves the s-word, I guess. Crass and vulgar, but I don't think I have moral qualms about connecting bad things and poop ;), so long as the bad things in question merit the comparison. The kids use "stupid" as a swear all. the. time. (and dh and I do too, to an extent), and I'm trying to limit it to situations that merit it (and *not* to use it to refer to people). IDK, words matter, kwim? There's something to be said to using the words that best fit the situation, not the first ones that come out of your mouth. And I know from first-hand experience that habitually using any sort of default word as a placeholder, where context and emotion fill in the otherwise empty meaning, can easily get you out of the habit of thinking through what you say and mean.

With the recent board change, the default setting was email notifications for followed content, plus to automatically follow any thread you posted in. That's a lot of emails ;). But you can go into your profile, click on notification settings, and turn all that off.

Pretty sure it was her realtor.

So it sounds like it's not unreasonable to expect more from a realtor/inspector. My family hasn't had great luck homebuying. We none of us knew anything and just blindly put ourselves into the hands of the realtor. Bewteen us we've made what feels like all the mistakes. My sis was the only one who came to distrust her realtor during the process, but she just closed her eyes to red flags and hoped nothing too bad would happen. (The expensive repair surprises only capped off an already bad process.) I'm hoping to learn from past mistakes, and be proactive and smarter about it this time.

A few years ago my sister bought a house, and she was very frustrated with her realtor and the realtor-rec'd home inspector. They refused to exercise any sort of professional judgement on her behalf. Upon being given the frankly scary 20-odd page list of everything wrong with the house, she asked the inspector what it all meant - which of these things are major, which are minor, which are the things you'd expect in a house like this and which aren't. In short, for the inspector to not just give her a giant list of facts, but to then exercise a bit of professional judgment and explain the signifiance of those facts, as he saw it. But he refused - said she'd have to contact individual contractors to get a cost estimate for fixing. But she wasn't looking for a detailed cost estimate for fixing from him, but more of a general sense of "how serious are these problems?" But nope, he insisted that was outside of his purview - all he does is list the problems, not discuss the problems. Ditto for the realtor - she refused to offer up any sort of professional opinion about the pros and cons of buying this house with these problems at this price. Wasn't her job. Well, my sister wasn't thrilled about that - what is the point of hiring professionals to help if they won't exercise any professional judgment? And for that and other reasons, she didn't trust her realtor at the time. And then they had 3 or 4 major problems with the house in the first month of ownership (a/c not working, plumbing backed up into the kitchen, and a major roof leak) - they spent over 20K fixing things in that first month. So one can't help but wonder if the realtor and inspector refused to exercise any judgment, because their judgment would have been to run away. So did my sister just get a bad realtor and inspector, or were they right that the sort of professional judgment she expected them to offer is simply not what realtors and inspectors do? (In which case, what sort of professionals *do* offer that kind of help with home-buying?) I've been curious ever since, and as we might be looking to buy a home, I'm rather interested in figuring it out.

Roget's International Thesaurus or equivalent: not a student edition, or a concise edition, but the biggest, most giant thesaurus you can manage. I started with Roget's American Edition, because we already had it, but got an older edition of the international thesaurus when I saw it was twice the size of the American one: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060185759/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I wouldn't skip SM 6a/b unless there's a compelling reason, especially if you are planning to skip pre-algebra, too. As another poster has said, wrt whether to skip 6, SM6 is part of the primary math program, and if it's been working for you thus far, why not finish it? My oldest is in 6th grade and will finish 5b. She's like your kids, in that she's good at math, but not necessarily gifted. I've been angsting over 7th grade pre-algebra - both if we should do Aops, or the Dolciani I have, and what to do about 6a/b. I really think she would benefit from consolidating and extending her arithmetic through SM6, but I want to aim for 8th grade algebra unless it proves to be a bad idea for her in practice. My plan is to do both SM6 and pre-algebra concurrently, to get the benefits of both SM6 and 8th grade algebra. We do two math sessions already (tb/wb and ip), so doing two math programs won't be a huge change.

Fwiw, the test prep resources that I have looked into focus on reviewing and filling in content and content-related skills gaps, not test-gaming skills (Erica Metzger on critical reading and grammar is an example). I think they are worth working through on their own merits - that it's good to have those skills in general.

Thank you so much! I was having the same problem as the OP, and this worked perfectly :).

I think it *is* important to understand the difference - but I also don't see how general you could reliably diagram the difference without understanding it, either - not when it comes to complicated sentences, anyway. You'd have to be *really* good at pattern-matching to be able to reliably diagram complicated sentences without actually understanding the difference, wouldn't you? And if you *were* that good at pattern matching, then you'd basically have an intuitive understanding of the difference - I don't think giving an explicit name and concept to what you already see would be too difficult, would it? Or maybe I'm not understanding the situation. In any case, I do think being able to distinguish between active and passive verbs is important - is the subject *doing* the verb or is the verb *being done* to the subject? Seems like you'd be likely to mis-identify the subject if you didn't get the difference. And if you *can* reliably tell the subject in both cases, then you must have *some* sort of intuitive understanding of the difference - you could use that to work on the explicit understanding. And wrt transitive vs intransitive - if you can't tell the difference, I'd think you'd be prone to mis-identifying direct objects, wouldn't you? I admit I'm shaky on this one - I know the difference in theory but I don't *feel* the difference. I'm hoping that working through diagramming with my dd11 will help me on this. So I do think that an understanding-through-diagramming approach can be helpful (instead of a strict understand-first, diagram-second approach), but you have to make sure the understanding part actually happens, kwim - that you move beyond a strictly procedural understanding of diagramming. In any case, I'm having problems with setting up a dichotomy between understanding grammar VS diagramming - I mean, isn't the whole point of diagramming to *aid* you in *understanding* grammar? What good does the ability to diagram do you if you have no idea how the diagram connects to the grammar itself? How can you use your diagramming skill to help you make sense of complicated grammar if you don't know how diagramming connects to grammar? I think seeing how diagramming connects to grammar and how grammar connects to actual understanding is probably *the* most vital thing in teaching grammar. Better less grammar that is thoroughly understood and connected to real life, than lots of complicated diagrams and grammar definitions that are, so far as the student is concerned, utterly unconnected to anything real. (And better still is complicated grammar that is fully understood and connected to real life - that's where one's grammar knowledge helps make one a better thinker, as well as a better reader and writer.)

I do Spelling Through Morphographs with my dd11. She does well with everything but the part where I orally spell a word (like w-r-i-t-i-n-g) and she's supposed to identify the word. She's truly abysmal at it, and nothing I've done to try to break it down into more manageable parts seems to help much. She seems unable to remember the letters in order, and she also finds it very difficult to put the letters together into a recognizable word (once we can get them in her head in the first place). Either something about the pattern of letters instantly sparks recognition in her brain, or she's stuck. I've modified the activity by spelling the word in chunks - just the first morphograph, and after she gets that, adding on the next morphograph and so on. And while the activity has the class first identify the words spelled by the teacher and then has the students spell the same words, I've started doing it backwards - having her spell the words first and only then try to identify them from me spelling them (so she has an idea of what she's listening for). But none of that has really made it doable - she *hates* the activity and I don't feel like she's improving at it - I'm just repeatedly dragging her through it. I'm tempted to just skip it (it's not a major part of the program), but I'm hesitant to do so when I don't understand the point of the activity within the program, and, more importantly, because I don't understand what about it is so hard for dd11. Maybe this is evidence of an underlying problem that we really need to work on? Thoughts? (Honestly, I'm not sure I'd do all that much better myself - if someone orally spells a word without giving any visual input, it's all just gibberish for me, too. I need to write down each letter as it comes in order to make any sense of it.)

How did you manage that, because we couldn't get canada to work either.

We did that for Sochi and it worked well. But when we got TunnelBear today ($10), we were not able to stream from either BBC or CBC - we still somehow registered as out-of-country. Understandable that they'd want to eliminate that loophole, but it's still annoying. Anyone successfully stream *these* olympics from another country with TunnelBear? Is there something we could do to make it work? (What we're doing right now is a week's free trial of the YouTube TV thing, to watch the opening ceremonies.)

That first paragraph makes me think of anxiety and/or strong empathy. It sounds like it hurts her for her teacher to fail, so she's taking on extra responsibility to help him avoid it. Eta: also, wrt your second paragraph, it sounds like she might be a zealous rule-follower in this situation as a means of supporting her beloved teacher, than because she's inherently drawn to rule-following for its own sake. In that case, the rule following and resulting tattling might be more of an symptom than the core issue itself.

I was thinking, wrt "be happy or be (proven) right", that there's a lot of ways to live the Truth without winning arguments, but there's not a lot of ways to live the Truth without, you know, *living the Truth*. And even now, while I accept the theoretical possibility of there being ways to stand and live Truth that don't involve explicit debates (and Internet essays ;)), I am hard-pressed to actually *name* any concrete alternatives. I think that might be a helpful thing to do - brainstorm concrete ways to live out the ideal of justice, for example, that don't involve calling out people for doing wrong. Is not justice far more than identifying wrongdoers? Then there ought to be many just things to do in addition to calling out wrongdoing. It would be good to think through what some of them might be - find some concrete moral alternatives, so there's more choices than to stand up for justice via tattling or to look the other way for peer approval.

I heard "Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?" a *lot* as a kid, and put like that, I'd pick being right, because *not* aiming to be right was unthinkable. As an adult, I eventually understood what people were getting at with that rhetorical question, but I still think it sets up a false dichotomy. I think a better way of putting is: Do you want to be *proved* right, or do you want to be happy/have playmates? I think the actual dichotomy isn't between *being* right in reality and being happy, but between trying to make people *acknowledge* you are right versus being happy. It's unthinkable to choose being happy or having playmates over seeking and acting in line with capital-T Truth - the morality of such an action isn't very good at all. But to choose the greater good of building relationships with others versus the lesser good of winning an argument - well, that *is* in line with trying to be a morally good person. As a kid and young adult, I definitely had trouble separating *being* right from trying to win the argument - I felt the moral duty to stand up for truth meant arguing till others agreed with me. And I was unable to judge the relative importance of things - *all* truth equally mattered and was worth defending to the death, every time. (Yes, I was a fun kid to raise ;).) And my parents did a lot to help me learn to accurately see nuances I used to be blind to. But that whole "do you want to be happy or be right" thing was more of a hindrance than a help, because it set up a false dichotomy - confirmed my b&w assumptions that not arguing was the same as not standing for truth, instead of challenging them.

I trend toward black & white thinking, and I've had real trouble - as an adult - trying to find consistent moral reasoning for why not to tattle. (One of my kids has a habit of tattling on their siblings, so I keep working at it.) Too often the conflict gets framed as "but they're doing wrong" (true) vs "but people hate when you tattle" (also true). But resolving the tension by declaring that it's better to not make my peers mad at me, even if that means looking the other way when they do wrong - well, that's not exactly building moral fiber, is it? And it directly contradicts the formal teaching kids get, which is that they should *tell a trusted adult* if bad things are going on, even if it will make their peers mad. I know what people actually mean is that you should tell the big things, and not tattle about the small things. But aside from the fact that kids get little actual *guidance* in determining big-v-little (just after-the-fact disapproval when they get it wrong), *why* does "people hate when someone brings wrongdoing to light" apply on little things but not on big things? As far as I can tell, it's because the little things "don't matter" - so rocking the boat isn't justified - but big things *do* matter, so rocking the boat *is* justified. And so the key moral distinction seems to be between wrongdoing that doesn't matter (and so isn't "real" wrongdoing), and wrongdoing that *does* matter. And, yeah, us black & white rule followers have a real problem with the usually unspoken idea of "wrongdoing that doesn't *really* matter". On the one hand, it matters because there are rules and there is punishment for not following the rules - the powers-that-be really *do* treat it as wrongdoing of some sort. But on the other hand, our peers all treat it as "acceptable" wrongdoing, and treat tattling as the greater crime. And the really confusing part is that the powers-that-be *also* often treat tattling as the greater crime, even though *they* are the ones who made the rule. God forbid you make people uncomfortable by pointing out wrongdoing that isn't *that* important, not important enough to be worth making people uncomfortable, right? There's absolutely no parallels to the epidemic of people looking the other way when it comes to "little" sexual indiscretions, right? Yeah, so I think that "people hate when you tell them they do wrong" - the usual reason given for not tattling - is a crap moral reason for not tattling on the little things. Plus, the whole idea of "wrongdoing that doesn't *really* matter" that underlies it is a crap moral category. If "not tattling on the little things" is going to have any legit moral standing, it needs to have a different definition of what makes something morally "little" and why the greater moral good is to let it slide. I don't have nearly as good an answer as I'd like to have, but here's what thoughts I do have (based on Christian ethics, as we're Christian). First off, too often the goal of tattling is to "get the other person in trouble" instead of a more constructive goal of helping the person turn from their sin or protecting the victims of the wrongdoer. With my dc, I do talk about directly addressing it with the erring sibling *before* coming to me. But while this reduces tattling, it doesn't help wrt the social aspect, or how *refraining* from speaking up can also *serve* a legit moral goal. In our Christian tradition (Lutheran), there's the idea of overlooking less serious mistakes out of love - that we let other people go on being wrong without comment when commenting would cause greater harm than the wrong itself. This is because concord among people is itself a positive good, and it can't be preserved if every small fault is constantly pointed out. But at the same time, errors and wrongdoing themselves do harm, and ignoring serious harm in the name of preserving concord is not good, either. So in b&w thinker terms, the moral duty to oppose evil does *not* mean that we are obligated to *always* speak up whenever *anything* wrong is done. We are always to do good and oppose evil, but doing good can involve overlooking offenses and suffering the consequences of others' wrongdoing *without* confronting them with it, when the consequences of their sin are small and little good is likely to be done by pointing their wrongdoing out. IDK, as a b&w thinker who is trying to learn nuance but not indifference (imo most people's "solution" for b&w thinking is to introduce a morally neutral "grey" category, where we don't need to care because it just doesn't matter), I think a real problem with b&w thinking is its tendency to elevate principles over people. But the solution isn't to learn how to elevate people over principles (the usual solution). Rather, I think it's to realize that principles are supposed to serve *human* good, not some abstract unconnected-to-actual-people good. The b&w thinker ideal is to serve principles *in order to* serve people. But it's rather easy to forget that serving principle is just a *means* to the end of serving people, and to equate the two, so that we think that serving principle *is* serving people, which allows us to leave actual people out of the equation in the name of serving them. I think we b&w thinkers need to realize is that serving people well requires *more* than serving principles. Justice always matters, but justice isn't the *only* thing that matters, justice isn't the *only* good. In this fallen world, which is both imperfect and imperfectible (by humans), we can't achieve all the good all the time. The best we can aim for is *as much good, as much of the time* as we can, knowing it will never be perfect. Which is hard for us b&w thinkers. I think we b&w thinkers, instead of learning to embrace the moral grey of things that don't matter, need instead to accept that *this isn't a perfect world* and so *there are no perfect solutions*. That doesn't mean there are times to *abandon* principles by arguing they "don't matter here" - they *always* matter. Instead, it's a matter of looking to see *all* the goods involved in a given situation - not just focusing on our favored good. And it's a matter of accepting that in this fallen world we have to balance goods as best as we can, without ever doing evil to achieve them. And that we aren't going to be able to serve *all* the goods perfectly. I think the nuance we b&w thinkers need to learn is that there's a *difference* between not perfectly achieving all the goods that ought to be achieved, and actually *doing evil* to achieve good. Honestly, I think that's the key nuance needed, right there - there's a difference between discerning morally right actions from morally wrong actions, and choosing the best, wisest action from the pool of morally right actions. AKA, there are usually *multiple* morally right answers, that are good and not evil, and we can acknowledge that *without* denying that there *are* wrong answers, too. So with the tattling issue, maybe it's worth thinking about what other goods are involved, in addition to the good of justice, and whatever good the rule in question is meant to promote. As Christians, if we are the victim, it's a legit upholding of justice to let their sin against us go and not hold it against them (but we can't make that decision on behalf of others who were sinned against). You can think about the goal of the rule that was broken, and alternatives to telling the teacher that could help uphold that goal; as well, you could think about whether telling the teacher helps or hurts the goal of students respecting and upholding the rule. There's also the good of building relationships, and whether constantly pointing out everyone's wrong is helping or hindering that. And there's addressing the issue of whether you have responsibility to point out a given wrong, whether failing to point it out *is* morally wrong, and so you have to do it no matter how unpopular it makes you. In that case, it might be worth brainstorming ways to point it out that minimize the negative fallout and maximize other goods. How can you point out others' wrongdoing in ways that are genuinely loving to *them*, not just loving towards the ideals of justice? (And if the classroom rules are *not* serving justice, as honestly it sounds like they maybe aren't, then now could be a time to discuss how not all legal rules match up with the moral law like they ought. I think people today break rules far too lightly - just because a given rule could be otherwise without being morally wrong, people justify breaking it. Actually, I think the standard ought to be to *follow* rules, even if they could legitimately be otherwise, and only break rules that themselves break the moral law. But even so, blind rule-following is *not* a sure-fire path to justice.) IDK if any of that helps. I just really have a thing about the morality, or lack thereof, of the no-tattling culture, even as I *do* think that good is not best served by pointing out each and every thing done wrong.

Kind of jumping in way late, but hopefully this is more-or-less pertinent to the ongoing discussion :). I think that feelings can be a guide to finding objective capital-T Truth - they provide a complementary approach to logic. We're human, we're going to have emotions, period - the ideal of dispassionate thinking is just not human reality (and I don't think it's even desirable as an ideal). (I'm thinking of C.S. Lewis and "men without chests" - emotions are *strong*, and principles that aren't backed by emotions aren't principles that actual human beings can hold strongly in practice, when push comes to shove.). Our feelings, like our thinking, are going to help or hinder us in seeking truth; what our feelings aren't going to do is stay out of the way. Just because we think we are thinking dispassionately doesn't mean we are; it just means we aren't aware of what we are feeling - and how it is affecting us. (And ditto for people who think their feelings are untainted by logic or thinking; there's thinking involved - it might be *bad* thinking - but it's not absent from the party.). And just as we can learn to think and examine our thinking in ways that help guide us *to* truth (or that pull us away from it), we can learn to feel and examine our feelings in ways that help guide us to truth (or pull us away from it). And our feelings can be a corrective for faulty thinking just as much as our thinking can be a corrective for faulty emotions. (I once read a logical argument that seemed airtight to my eyes, but whose conclusion morally repulsed me. And though it bothered me to not be able to find flaws in his argument, I did not change my position. I let my moral feeling trump my logic - and I acknowledged as much to myself. It was somewhat ironic, as the arguer taught that if you are unable to poke holes in a logical argument, you are *morally obligated* to accept the conclusion as true. If you felt otherwise, those feelings were by definition lying to you, because logic is the only path to truth. Now, rejecting a logic argument as false because you hate the conclusion is bad logic, of course. But rejecting your moral feelings as false because a single logic argument came to a contrary conclusion - idk, I think that's a recipe for bad living, myself. It's not great, when your feelings and thinking are at odds - but I don't think ignoring your feelings and going whole-hog on your thinking gets you any closer to the truth than ignoring your thinking and going whole-hog on your feelings would.) But I think that empathy is different - it's more a guide to understanding someone else's *subjective* experience. I think it can be useful and helpful in keeping the impact of objective truth on actual humans front and center in our considerations. But sometimes I think people combine empathy with a belief that anything that causes someone pain (or certain kinds of pain) is inherently wrong. And that can allow subjective experiences to trump objective truth - where objective truth is delegitimized not by showing it is objectively wrong, but by showing that it causes *subjective* pain. Empathy, which allows us to share someone else's subjective experience, then can then become a way to side-step having to wrestle with finding objective truth, instead of input to consider in wrestling with finding objective truth.